Turkish Islamic Studies series
(TISs)
Publication Project
The introduction of the printing press to the Ottoman Empire can be regarded as the beginning of the spread of printed works. However, the press appeared in the Ottoman world much later than in Europe—only in 1727, during the time of İbrahim Müteferrika. Although this delay can be explained by several historical and cultural factors, the rapid developments that followed soon made these reasons irrelevant. With the introduction of the press, the first printed works in the Ottoman Empire were mostly in the fields of linguistics, history, and geography. The Vankulu Dictionary (Vankulu Lugatı), translated from Arabic into Ottoman Turkish, was the first book printed in the Ottoman press and an important lexicographical work. This first printed book also symbolized the beginning of a translation tradition supported by modern technology that would continue for centuries. Even though many other works were later printed in Müteferrika’s press, this early focus foreshadowed the intellectual priorities that would remain central for generations to come: language and translation.
The Ottoman Empire’s territorial losses and relative decline vis-à-vis the West during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made reform movements inevitable. The process of Westernization that began with the Tulip Era (Lâle Devri) gained momentum under Sultans Selim III and Mahmud II and became institutionalized through the Tanzimat and Islahat reforms. During this period, translated works from the West played a central role in the Ottoman intellectuals’ efforts toward modernization. Translations—especially from French and other European languages into Ottoman Turkish—gave rise to a new intellectual accumulation in science, literature, and philosophy. One of the most remarkable developments in this regard was the appearance, in the 1860s, of writers such as Ahmed Midhat Efendi, who began producing novels and stories inspired by Western literature. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables found its thematic counterpart in Namık Kemal’s İntibah, while Shakespeare’s plays also began to capture the attention of Ottoman thinkers. Institutions such as Encümen-i Dâniş were established to promote translation activities, and the influx of translated works initiated a profound transformation within the Ottoman intellectual sphere.
This momentum continued into the Republican era, when translation activities became a systematic state policy. Under the Ministry of Education led by Hasan Âli Yücel, the establishment of the Translation Bureau (Tercüme Bürosu) represented a major intellectual milestone. Western classics—from Plato and Descartes to Shakespeare and Goethe—were translated into Turkish, alongside many important works from the Eastern canon. These translations played a significant role in shaping Turkey’s cultural and intellectual modernization.
As translation activities diversified, they inevitably drew the attention of Western scholars engaged in Oriental studies—a field that had emerged long before and continued to grow into a vast corpus of research. The pioneers of Orientalist scholarship included Sylvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), Gustav Weil (1808–1889), Aloys Sprenger (1813–1893), William Muir (1819–1905), Ernest Renan (1823–1892), Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930), Reinhart Dozy (1820–1883), Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921), Carl Brockelmann (1868–1956), Reynold A. Nicholson (1868–1945), David Samuel Margoliouth (1858–1940), Louis Massignon (1883–1962), H. A. R. Gibb (1895–1971), A. J. Arberry (1905–1969), Henri Laoust (1905–1983), and Joseph Schacht (1902–1969), among many others. Although translations of Orientalist works into Turkish began later than other types of translation, today a substantial portion of Orientalist Islamic studies has been rendered into Turkish—and this process continues at an accelerating pace.
Initially, some circles within the theological community approached these translations with caution; nevertheless, their influence on academic research in theology became inevitable. Today, in Türkiye’s more than one hundred Faculties of Divinity, numerous studies produced under the category of Basic Islamic Sciences (Temel İslâmî Bilimler) show striking similarities to Western works both in content and in method. The ease of access to sources, facilitated by rapid communication technologies, has fostered deeper intellectual interaction between Western and Turkish scholars. As a result, researchers from both contexts now collaborate on similar topics, co-author papers, and discuss their findings in comparable academic styles at international conferences and in scholarly journals.
Despite these promising developments, the contributions of Muslim scholars and Turkish Islamic thinkers—who have been producing significant works for over a century—remain largely unknown in the West and the Arab world. This lack of awareness is, without doubt, a result of the one-sided flow of translations from foreign languages into Turkish. Apart from a small number of scholars who studied abroad, very few Turkish Islamic researchers publish in Arabic or Western languages. Although several publishing houses and journals have attempted to bridge this gap, their initiatives have lacked sustainability. Consequently, many well-researched and high-quality works produced in Türkiye remain confined within national boundaries. Short English or Arabic abstracts of dissertations and books fail to convey the true depth of these studies, and many Western and Arab scholars have expressed frustration over their inability to access or understand this body of research.
In light of these observations, we believe that translating major works of Islamic scholarship—especially those produced in the past two centuries—into English, the global language of academia, will mark a critical step toward reversing the one-way flow of translation and fostering genuine intellectual exchange.
Encouraged by the rapid scientific and technological progress of our age, we now find it both feasible and inspiring to undertake this mission. The emergence of artificial intelligence–supported tools has dramatically transformed the translation process. What once demanded months of manual dictionary work and editing can now be achieved in a fraction of the time. When used under the supervision of linguistically competent experts, AI-assisted translation systems significantly reduce errors and increase precision. These innovations have opened exciting possibilities, encouraging researchers like us to embark on ambitious, globally oriented projects.
It is within this spirit that we have launched the Turkish Islamic Studies Series, a translation initiative dedicated to introducing Türkiye’s rich corpus of Islamic scholarship to an international readership. The selection, translation, and publication—both as e-books and in print—of the chosen works will be finalized in collaboration with publishers, while initial efforts will focus on texts either free of copyright restrictions or whose rights have been secured. We intend to publish the translated works on a scheduled basis and to make them available through leading e-book platforms worldwide, ensuring broad accessibility.
Through the Turkish Islamic Studies Series, we aim to translate into English the works of prominent Islamic scholars and thinkers from our region, originally written in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, or modern Turkish—thus presenting to the world the intellectual heritage of our geography.
Project Director
Dr. Sabri Kızılkaya